The InSight lander was actually responsible for moving the rock with the force of its thrusters, NASA said. The rock was slightly bigger than a golf ball and it tumbled approximately 0.9 metres — farther than NASA has seen any other rock roll when landing on another world.

WATCH: NASA successfully lands InSight on Mars in November 2018

“I’ve seen a lot of Mars rocks over my career,” Matt Golombek, a JPL geologist who has helped NASA land all its Mars missions since 1997, said in a statement. “This one probably won’t be in a lot of scientific papers, but it’s definitely one of the coolest.”

Downey hailed the discovery in a tweet Thursday night. “Sometimes the world does seriously cool stuff,” he wrote.

Twitter users were conflicted once the crossover details were revealed.